Hourly data for evaluating the carbon dioxide emission factor of heat pumps or other devices connected to the Italian grid

This data article includes an elaboration of carbon dioxide data available from three different online sources in the years from 2016 to 2019. The data article refers to the paper “Interpolating functions for CO2 emission factors in dynamic simulations: the special case of a heat pump” by the same authors. The data are provided on an hourly basis and are useful to determine the carbon dioxide emission of an electric heat pump or other devices connected to the Italian grid. The importance of the provided data is related to the possibility of having an accurate estimation of the CO2 emission when the device works for only a limited period of time during the year or day. Moreover, since the given data are provided in electronic format (.txt file or .xlsx spreadsheet) they are very useful to perform dynamic simulation using self-made or commercial software such as Trnsys, Energy Plus etc

A Long-Term Dynamic Analysis of Heat Pumps Coupled to Ground Heated by Solar Collectors

In agreement with the decarbonization of the building sector to meet the 2050 climate neutrality targets, borehole thermal storage for solar energy represents a potential solution to increase the energy efficiency of renewable energy plants. As is well known, electricity is not the optimum solution to integrate large inflows of fluctuating renewable energy. In the present paper, we investigate the possibility to use the solar collector to give energy to the borehole field. In detail, a solar-assisted geothermal heat pump is applied to a school located in Milan, Italy. In winter, both the energy from the solar collector and the heat pump are collected into a storage tank connected to the emission terminals, whereas, in summer, as there is no energy demand, the hot water from the solar collector flows into the geothermal probes. By means of this seasonal thermal energy storage technology, the intermittent solar energy collected and stored during the summer months can be utilized during the winter months when the heating demand is high. A long-term dynamic analysis is performed by employing Trnsys. The results show that solar collectors coupled with ground-source heat pumps can give an important contribution to the soil temperature drift, and this also applies in cases of un-balanced loads during the heating season. Moreover, the employment of solar collectors increases the seasonal coefficient of performance of the heat pumps and may rise to reductions to the probes field

Influence of different heating systems on thermal comfort perception: a dynamic and CFD analysis

In this paper, we investigate the influence of different heating systems on the thermal comfort indexes, Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD), for a residential apartment located in Bologna (Italy). The apartment has an area of 40 m2 and is located on the ground floor of 4 floors building. The envelop consists in horizontal perforated bricks with internal thermal insulation material and two windows. The analyses are performed employing Trnsys, a commercial dynamic simulation software and Simcenter STAR-CCM+, a multiphysics computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. The CFD analysis regards a steady condition of a typical winter day in Bologna. Thermal comfort indexes and thermal energy demand are studied comparing two different heating generation systems existing in the considered apartment: a condensing gas boiler coupled with radiators as terminal emitters and an air-to-air heat pump. By crossing the results obtained by the dynamical approach and by the CFD simulations, a two-objective methodology where energy consumption is minimised while thermal comfort is obtained, is presented

Public health triangulation: approach and application to synthesizing data to understand national and local HIV epidemics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Public health triangulation is a process for reviewing, synthesising and interpreting secondary data from multiple sources that bear on the same question to make public health decisions. It can be used to understand the dynamics of HIV transmission and to measure the impact of public health programs. While traditional intervention research and metaanalysis would be ideal sources of information for public health decision making, they are infrequently available, and often decisions can be based only on surveillance and survey data.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The process involves examination of a wide variety of data sources and both biological, behavioral and program data and seeks input from stakeholders to formulate meaningful public health questions. Finally and most importantly, it uses the results to inform public health decision-making. There are 12 discrete steps in the triangulation process, which included identification and assessment of key questions, identification of data sources, refining questions, gathering data and reports, assessing the quality of those data and reports, formulating hypotheses to explain trends in the data, corroborating or refining working hypotheses, drawing conclusions, communicating results and recommendations and taking public health action.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Triangulation can be limited by the quality of the original data, the potentials for ecological fallacy and "data dredging" and reproducibility of results.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Nonetheless, we believe that public health triangulation allows for the interpretation of data sets that cannot be analyzed using meta-analysis and can be a helpful adjunct to surveillance, to formal public health intervention research and to monitoring and evaluation, which in turn lead to improved national strategic planning and resource allocation.</p

Applicability of Face Masks as Recyclable Raw Materials for Self-Made Insulation Panels

The circular economy model is based on the 4R framework—reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover. While recycling was the primary focus in the past, the shortage of raw materials and the desire to reduce carbon footprints have led to a change in focus: end-of-life materials are now considered resources rather than waste. When discharged, end-of-life materials still possess properties that can be exploited. For this reason, a comprehensive characterization of reusable materials is mandatory to reduce waste and increase material availability. The reuse of waste materials, such as surgical masks, is of particular interest in giving people in disadvantaged contexts the opportunity to self-produce and self-install panels within their homes, with the dual result of improving indoor comfort and increasing human capital. This paper focuses on the identification of a possible second application for surgical face masks through experimental characterization. Panels made of masks were tested for water vapor permeability, thermal conductivity, and fire resistance and their use as insulating material in the building sector was discussed. Based on the results, surgical face masks are suitable as thermal insulating materials, do not pose safety concerns, and can reduce energy consumption and improve thermal comfort when installed indoors

A numerical analysis for the design of a climatic chamber

In the present paper, a time-dependent numerical model for the design of a climatic chamber is been developed. The reference is made to the design of a chamber suitable for tracked and wheeled tractors, i.e. having measures 5x8x4 m3 (length x width x height). In order to support the theoretical predictions for the design, a numerical analysis is performed by employing Matlab-Simulink, a software package devoted to the simulation of the behavior of transient systems. Reference is made to simulate the air conditioning system of the tractor in both the two cases: the "winter case" and the "summer case", as prescribed by the ISO 14269-2:1997 standard. In fact, in order to achieve the compulsory European type approval for tracked and wheeled agricultural tractors, the European Regulation 167/2013 has to be considered and the approval test for heating, cooling and conditioning systems requires experimental measures according to the European Delegated Regulation EU 2015/208. In detail, the heating and cooling devices have to be experimentally tested basing the measurements on the procedure foreseen in the ISO 14269-2:1997 standard, that provides a particular heavy weather conditions, both for summer and winter cases, and for long periods of time. For the mathematical model, the climatic chamber is represented by 5 blocks, and balance equations are written to simulate the systems in both climate conditions

A new climate chamber for air-source and ground-source heat pump testing based on the Hardware-in-the Loop approach: Design and cross validation

The present paper describes a new test bench, designed for experimental tests on small- and medium-sized air-source and ground-source heat pumps, built at the University of Bologna (Italy). The test rig is based on the “Hardware-in-the-Loop” approach and is mainly composed of a test room (i.e. the climate chamber), in which the tested heat pump is placed, a borehole heat exchanger field for tests on ground-source units, the hydraulic loop and the building emulator. The test rig allows to test commercial and prototypal heat pumps under dynamic operating conditions, in order to reproduce the real behavior of a heat-pump based heating system and assess the heat pump effective energy performance. According to the Hardware-in-the-Loop approach, the hydraulic circuit of the facility is designed to reproduce exactly the time-dependent variations of the weather data during a series of representative days in a chosen site and the building thermal load given to the heat pump, calculated by a dynamic simulation software (i.e., the building emulator). In this paper, main components of the experimental facility are presented and the outcomes of a series of numerical simulations carried out with different software, such as Trnsys, Matlab-Simulink and STAR-CCM+, to define the system operative range and the effective behavior of the test bench under dynamic conditions are reported. Numerical models have been validated with experimental data, obtained from a trial test carried out on an air-source heat pump according to current technical standards. Comparison between numerical data and experimental results point out an excellent agreement and, for this reason, numerical models can be used to assess the optimal position of the tested heat pump within the chamber or to define the test bench operating conditions. The cross-validation methodology between experimental data and numerical results from different software, applied in this paper to a test bench for heat pumps, can be employed for the sizing of other test facilities